Well-known luxury marketing expert Milton Pedraza, of the Luxury Institute in New York City, addressed a group of members of LuxuryRealEstate.comin early May, 2007 at its "Spring Retreat" in Key Biscayne, Florida.  Pedraza presented results from The Luxury Institute's most recent Best Practices Survey, entitled "The Wealthy and Web 2.0" at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Key Biscayne.

The highlight of Pedraza's speech was his compilation of some great statistics about the Internet habits of wealthy consumers. His presentation focused on the rise of consumer-generated content on the Web, with an emphasis on the way in which the wealthy use the Internet to shop for luxury goods, including homes.

Pedraza contends that "The majority of wealthy consumers visit websites where customers write reviews or rate products to gather pre-purchase research".  However, he goes on to say that the wealthy are more often "spectators" rather than contributing their own reviews and ratings on social networking sites. 

Overall, Pedraza believes that the ability of Web 2.0 sites to "duplicate the physical luxury experience" will be key to the success of Internet marketing in the future.  He feels strongly that real estate is one industry that can benefit hugely from paying attention to social networking trends among upscale consumers.

Active Rain members are clearly on the right track in participating in the development of social networking on the Web.  Studies like the one presented by Pedraza may have a great deal to do with all the attention Active Rain is receiving from Realtor.org and Move.com.